RE: SEUL: Stopping dreams

[Donovan Rebbechi <elflord@pegasus.rutgers.edu>]

> 
> On 16-Feb-98 jfm2@club-internet.fr wrote:
> - -> 
> - -> I have seen some propositions who seem to be going too far or be
> - -> irrealistic.
> - -> 
> - -> 1) Editors: The goal is to provide the user an editor for common tasks
> - -> like sending mail and news or fiwing some problems in config files.
> - -> These tasks don't require a powerful editor.  They don't need much
> - -> more than an editor being capable of search and replace.  Criteria are
> - -> online help and intuitiveness.  In addition it would be nice if it had
> - -> an X and a console mode.
> 
> I can certainly agree with this.
> 

Yes ! I agree too. COuldn't have said it better myself!

Now regarding having an X and console mode, unfortunately, this is not
very realistic. THe editors I've seen that have a genuine GUI mode and
console mode are:

(a)	emacs 	(elaborate programmers editor)
(b)	xwpe  	( same. also restrictive license		)
(c)	vi    	( my favourite --  but not what we're after! )
(d)	jed has a version called "xjed" but it's really just jed running
in an X window, not a gui editor.
(e)	there was another oldish one, mars or something ? at sunsite. But
it's all in German ! and it didn't look that nice. 

I think we're better off going for seperate console and GUI editors.

> - -> Editors like NEDIT are _not_ what we are looking for.  NEDIT is a
> - -> programmer's editor with many features who won't be used by an end
> - -> user but whose sheer existence will confuse our users.  In addition

dead wrong! nedit is ridiculously user-friendly, more so than any other
X-Windows editor. True though, most features wouldn't get used. But this
is not a major prob. Nedit REALLY SHOULD ship with the contrib package.

> - -> NEDIT works only under X: ie cannot be used in emergencies.

correct. So we need a console editor as well.

pico, ee, and jed are my favourites. I'll post reviews of the others
anyway though.

> 
> Nedit is a good simple program for doing simple editing.  I use it all the
> time.  The problem with it is that it is linked to motif.  This makes it
> non-free and non-base for SEUL.

Dead right. THIS is why Nedit is not on my list of preferred GUI editors.
Two others, Red  and KEdit, were disqualified for precisely the same
reason. 

> - -> So for now it is not possible to drop the user into X without having
> - -> given him the opportunity to verify it works.  In additikon X and XDM
> - -> don't support concepts like if immediately killed than next time start
> - -> in failsafe mode.  The best we can do is: in case of unclean shutdown
> - -> (like when the user hits reset due to garbled display) ask about
> - -> restarting in conservative mode (640x480 low refresh rate) assuming
> - -> PCI scanning reports than it is a supported card and than the server
> - -> is present.

ANother option to firing up XDM straight away would be this :

fire up X (startx) as part of the installation procedure. If X fails, the
user is returned to a menu with some kind of message that it failed and
some instructions. Maybe the instructions are to choose the VGA server. 

In other words, I am suggesting that XDM is used only after X has been
configured. This way , the loop of death does not happen, because the user
is not asked to go on and complete the setup of X until it is configured.
There's no reason to run XDM during the configuration process itself.
Startx can be used (though the user shouldn't have to start it from the
shell, the installation process should fire it up) and if startx aborts,
then there's a message for the user, and the machine tries to setup VGA
mode. Startx goes again. If it aborts, user gets another message that the
mono server (ugghh) will be configured. 

 My idea is that XDM needn't be fired up until the setup is
complete. 

-- Donovan